It feels right to have a film about the end of the world be a cold thing, literally and figuratively. And so it is with THE MIDNIGHT SKY, a story set three decades or so in the future is an uncertain blend of personal regret with planetary destruction. Set both in the arctic and in… Read More »
DEEPWATER HORIZON
Peter Berg’s DEEPWATER HORIZON does not mince cinematic words when it comes to telling the story of the worst off-shore oil rig disaster in history. It can be summed up in three words. Profit over people. It’s a screed, alright, but a compelling, and beautifully crafted one about ordinary people facing the unimaginable with courage… Read More »
JASON BOURNE
I’m put in mind of tea leaves. Good quality tea leaves that have rendered such a wonderful cup of tea that you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s enough of their essential, unique quality left to take one more infusion to make a cup as good as that first one. And so it is with… Read More »
A Ho-Hum TERMINATOR GENISYS
Inflated and grandiose, TERMINATOR GENISYS rethinks the Terminator mythos by coming up the novel notion that changing the past might have more than the intended repercussions. Hence, when the John Conner (Jason Clarke, near left) in this timeline sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney, far left) back to 1984 Los Angeles to save John’s mother, Sarah (Emilia Clarke),… Read More »
SAN ANDREAS’ Flight of Fancy
If nothing else, SAN ANDREAS is one of the finest advertisements ever made for the importance of emergency preparedness. Those who survive the state-long earthquake that erupts on the eponymous fault line are either those who know to duck under a table or shelter by a solid wall, or those who are related to those… Read More »
OBLIVION
OBLIVION is a slow-moving behemoth of a film that has been art-directed into a coma. Sure, its gorgeous to look at, but is just as sterile and cold as the retro-futuristic home its hero occupies. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, it retains the static quality of the paper-bound format. In keeping… Read More »
ROBOCOP
ROBOCOP is a laudable rethinking of the 1987 original. Told in broad thematic strokes, it still harbors in its soul a fine dialectic on identity, humanity, and even the reality (or lack thereof) of free will. Sure, its an action flick with shoot-em-up and blow-em-up sequences, but thanks to a grounding performance by Joel Kinnaman… Read More »